Transitions are Hard!

Teaching and parenting are not simple, easy tasks for anyone, including us. There has been a lot of change in our lives and the lives of our children over the last few months.  We are all adjusting to the change from public school to homeschool. We have changed our primary location for our learning time, which led to less time for the adults to collaborate and less opportunity for all our children to feel connected to their adults.  I’m not going to paint a perfect picture of our homeschooling adventure. We have had some seriously rough days so far this year, and I recently found myself questioning, “Is homeschooling really right for us?” and, worse, participating in harmful self-talk: “This isn’t working.  I’m failing.” 

I reached out to some great friends and colleagues, who reminded me that we are all going through some major transitions right now, and that we need to make time and space for the big feelings we are undoubtedly going to experience during this time.  As a former Instructional Coach, I would have counseled any teacher or friend making a major change to anticipate big feelings from both the children and the adults involved, but I couldn’t offer that advice to myself. I needed my support community to do that for me.  I needed to take a deep breath and really let that sink in: Make time and space for the inevitable, natural big feelings that come with a big change. 

To do this, we released some of the academic goals (or perhaps I should say pressure) during our choice times, two chunks of time during the school day when the children choose their activities.  Rather that limiting those choices to academic ones, we allowed more time for child-guided play. Play has a vital role in children’s emotional processing and in the developing of bonds with their peers and the adults in their lives. (Ginsburg 2007)  

Ultimately, handling this transition was more about a change in my mindset and less about asking the children to do anything differently.  It was about telling myself, “Play is important. This is what we need right now.  Emotions don’t mean failure. Struggle doesn’t mean failure.” Changing my own internal monologue changes my presence with the children.  It impacts my tone of voice, my expectations, and my own sense of purpose. My role isn’t “the holder of knowledge”. My role is facilitator of thinking, learning, creating, exploring, and, perhaps mostly importantly, navigating feelings.